now stands at 94. there are 4.6 million homes and businesses without power. and the new estimate for economic damage, to say nothing of the property damage, is $50 billion. "the new york times" reporting the storm could shave 0.5% of the country's gdp. for most of the northeast, this now is a recovery mission. yesterday in california, military planes loaded with utility vehicles were shipped into new york. an army of some 50,000 utility workers from across the country, even in canada, now being deployed to this region to help in the massive project to restore power. three navy warships are anchored off the northeast coast to help with the relief efforts. in new jersey, military trucks are being deployed to operate as polling places on election day in the hardest hit communities that remain without power. good morning. i'm willie geist. this is "way too early." the good news trickling out slowly today. amtrak will begin offering limited service between new york city and boston. new jersey transit will start

moving today with limited service. the new york subway system making advances, little by little. the m-train, which links queens to manhattan, just started run. there are still no trains running from low 34th street where half of manhattan remains this morning in the dark. so the millions of new yorkers who depend on subways are now waiting, as you can see in these pictures, in long lines for city buses. for those who drive into the new york city area, the lines stretched for miles yesterday. enough to make you turn around and stay home. in an effort to ease gridlock in the city, the mayor has ordered all vehicles entering manhattan must have at least three passengers. that stands for the rest of the week. there are check points set up on the way into the city with cars not meeting the three-person rule being turned away. and you're only beginning to make your way to new york, if you're lucky, to find gas or cars. about 80% of new jersey stations are either without power or without fuel. those that do have gas are

facing nearly impossible demand. both new jersey senators now asking president obama and the federal government for emergency fuel supply. today, secretary of homeland security janet napolitano is expected to arrive in staten island. many resident there is are feeling desperate, overlooked, and angry saying they've received little emergency aid. nbc's ann curry spent the day there yesterday. >> every single person on this block lost everything. >> staten island has had enough. >> we just want everyone to know that we are hurting down here, and we need help immediately. >> reporter: residents here are asking, why hasn't more help arrived? >> i think that we're not getting the attention because we are a working class neighborhood and we're kind of just like fend for yourself. >> reporter: on the debris-strewn streets of this community where the death toll

has risen to at least 19, the f fury and frustration played out on live television. >> you need to come here and help us. we need assistance. >> reporter: it was called a disgrace. >> it's nowhere to be found. all the american red cross, all the people making these big salaries should be out there on the front lines. i am disappointed. >> reporter: the red cross says it's sending ten vehicles with food and water. meantime, residents and officials are questioning the city's priorities. >> the city of new york right now is talking about getting water out of the battery tunnel and preparing for a marathon. we're pulling bodies out of the water. you see the disconnect here? >> reporter: today, new york city police and fire departments were still going house to house to account for everyone who didn't follow the mandatory evacuation orders. >> can you look me straight in the eye and say that the response was not

disproportionate for places that were more wealthy in new york city? >> absolutely not. we brought everybody in. there's been fema task forces that have been assigned here now. you know, assisting us with the searches. >> we are in the community talking to the residents that's been affected. we're urging everybody to register with fema. >> i never planned to leave here. i thought i was going to stay here the rest of my life. >> reporter: phyllis didn't lose any members of her family, but she did lose virtually everything else. >> i want to go home, but there's no home! i can't go home! that's killing me. it's breaking my heart. i want to go home to my house. >> reporter: at 62 and a grandmother, she is trying to find traces of her life. >> this is the only wedding photograph of my mom. >> reporter: a moment of joy as the water on staten island recedes among wide desperation and grief. >> ann curry reporting from staten island, just a few miles from where we are here in manhattan. tonight, the networks of nbc

universal joining forces to air a one-hour live benefit concert. it starts at 8:00 eastern time. it will be hosted by matt lauer and includes performances by bruce springsteen, jon bon jovi, and christina aguilera. money donated will be given to the red cross. that's tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on the networks of nbc universal. much more on the storm in a few minutes. we turn briefly to the final days of the presidential campaign where president obama is focused on iowa, making stops there every day between now and the election on tuesday. his schedule tells you everything you need to know about where his campaign is looking. he'll be in virginia, florida, new hampshire, iowa, colorado, and wisconsin over the next 96 hours. mitt romney will be in many of those same states over the next four days, although he's hitting pennsylvania and bypassing florida. president obama back on the trail yesterday after a three-daybreak to oversee the storm recovery.

he rallied a crowd of about 10,000 people in colorado making a not-so-subtle jab at his opponent's tendency to change his mind. >> after four years as president, you know me by now. you know me. you may not agree with every decision i make. you may be frustrated at the pace of change. i always remind people that when we did the auto bailout, only 10% of the country approved of it. including, by the way, folks in michigan and ohio. but you know what i believe. you know where i stand. you know i'm willing to make tough decisions even when they're not politically convenient. >> and mitt romney returned to his pre-hurricane attack mode in virginia yesterday. there, mr. romney blasted the president for suggesting in an interview with "morning joe" this week that he's considering

creating a new secretary of business in a second term. >> i've said i want to kol sol date a whole bunch of government agencies. we should have one secretary of business instead of nine different departments that are dealing with things like getting loans to sba or helping companies with exports. there should be a one-stop shop. >> they came up with something this last week, though. the president said he's going to consider putting in place a secretary of business, all right? a department of business. well, first, of course, we already have a department of commerce. commerce and business do mean the same thing after all. but i don't happen to think that putting in a new chair in the cabinet room is going to bring new jobs to the people of america. so we got a plan to do that. >> romney campaign also out with a new ad claiming big government by the president's administration. president obama picked up the endorsement yesterday of new york city mayor michael

bloomberg, citing superstorm sandy, the independent mayor wrote an op-ed for bloomberg.com saying he'll vote for the president because of his record on climate change. mayor bloomberg wrote in part, the devastation brought to the area brought the stakes of tuesday's presidential election into sharp relief. one sees climate change as a threat to our planet. the other does not. i want risk management above electoral politics. but the endorsement wasn't what we call in the business ringing. bloomberg, a republican turned independent who didn't back a candidate in 2008, took a swipe at the president in that endorsement writing, if the 1994 or 2003 version of mitt romney were running for president, i may well have voted for him. like so many other independents, i found the past four years to be, in a word, disappointing. there's your endorsement. however, in the same op-ed the mayor slammed romney for walking

away from his previously held positions on climate change, immigration, and health care. in less than three hours from now, the labor department will release the final monthly jobs report before election day. some economists expect the rate to go up after september unemployment fell to 7.8%. that was the lowest level since 2008. let's take an early look at the markets live in london. good morning. >> good morning to you. ha as you said, this is a crucial employment report. it's the last jobs data we're going to get before the election. that's why it's so critical politically, at least, for these two parties. expectations right now pretty low. i'll take you quickly through the numbers. 120,000 jobs expected to be added in october and perhaps a slight tick higher in the unemployment report. a weaker number for less jobs added is going to favor a romney versus obama. the key question is just how can

one data point influence voters ahead of the elections next week. that level of uncertainty, of course, going to make markets volatile after this report. it's coming at the same time where rising costs of hurricane sandy are coming in. that's something we have to look forward to in the november numbers, not impacting today. four days, of course, before the election. i think we can expect a politically charged payroll report later today. for now, back to you. >> we will see those numbers at 8:30 eastern time. less than three hours from now. julia, thanks so much. as always this morning, you can e-mail me at waytooearly@msnbc.com. tweet me @williegeist. let me know what you're doing. still ahead, richard engle takes to the skies above new york city to survey the damage. his report next. plus -- >> number five -- >> single and looking to mingle?

find that special someone on the early voting line. >> yeah, that's right. >> vice president joe biden stops by letterman to give his top ten reasons to vote early. that clip and a check on weather when "way too early" comes right back. i'm depending on you like i have in the past. ais i'll try not to disappoint you. thank you very much. [ man ] ring ring... progresso

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let's get a check on your forecast now from nbc meteorologist bill karins. bill, good morning. >> got to tweak that election day forecast. looking slightly interesting. we have some issues possibly in the southeast. maybe a little bit of rain. that could try to sneak its way up the coast. that would be the concern if it does play out. we'll watch the potential for rain in the southeast. if it does come up the coast, of course we don't want any stormy weather over areas of the northeast. it is possible. this would be like a little weak nor'easter type storm. weak. no snow it doesn't look like. just periods of rain and windy conditions on wednesday for all the locations that were affected. my concerns are, there's really no dunes left to protect the beaches. any higher waves than we typically get would cause beach erosion. then any loose limbs on the trees could fall with 40 miles per hour gusts. the biggest thing, delayed progress of the cleanup throughout the region. that's what i'm watching. the storm itself is still up

there in quebec and heading away. the cold air continues to cycle around it. it's very chilly in southern new england, all through the mid-atlantic with temperatures in the 40s this morning. this afternoon will only be in the 50s. we don't have a lot of troublesome weather today. we're not looking at too much wet weather at all. the southern half of the country looks beautiful. as we go into your weekend, just some showers in texas and even sunday looks nice too. again, all eyes on election day forecast. doesn't look too bad, especially in the swing states. again, wednesday is when we could see the affected areas dealing with the next storm. >> already plenty of loose debris to worry about. all right, bill. thanks so much. as we mentioned earlier in the show, new york infrastructure little by little is starting to come online from subways and trains to buses and planes. but the reality for many new yorkers is life on a friend's couch or just life in the dark. nbc's richard engel got a look from the sky. >> reporter: from here you can see the skyline, that iconic

image. new york city surrounded by water and now partly under water. >> there's the pumps. >> reporter: at the tip of manhattan, the south ferry subway station is simply out of commission. >> from where we are at the top of this water, the top of the flooding, to the very bottom, how deep is this pool? >> i would say we have about 20 feet to get to the platform. >> reporter: there is a plan to get the water out. >> so you're sending a train that also pumping water into the tunnel. >> we'll bring it in, submerge it slightly. it will have a hose and suck the water up. >> reporter: and the tunnel connecting manhattan and brooklyn, the longest of its kind in north america, now holds 40 million gallons of water that must be removed with care. >> some places we could probably pump out quicker, but we don't want to collapse the tunnel. so we have so pump it out somewhat slow since pressure is equalized and the tunnel doesn't collapse. >> reporter: even the dock on liberty island has been washed

away. the statue just recently renovated and nearby ellis island are now closed until further notice. blame it on a freak storm, climate change, or both, these are problems new york has never had before. >> here we see one possible configuration. >> reporter: some say they could be prevented from happening again by building sea walls, levees, or gigantic surge barriers. oceanography professor malcolm bowman. >> if we had such barriers in place during hurricane sandy, there would have been no damage at all. >> reporter: others, including mayor michael bloomberg, don't see that happening. >> i don't know that i think there's any practical ways to build barriers in the oceans. that's not -- when you have an enormous harbor like we do. >> reporter: the question and the cleanup continues. the protection you get from up here is this is going to take weeks, maybe months. >> it's not over yet by a long shot. >> richard engel reporting from new york city.

the pumps being used to clear the city's tunnels can remove up to 16,000 gallons a minute. that's a lot but still a daunting task. in one tunnel alone tlr, there remains some 80,000 gallons of standing water. i want to show you some pictures we're just getting in ridgefield, new jersey. this is a sonoco station in ridgefield. the scarcity of gas, the lack of power at a lot of these stations has caused lines for miles and miles and miles. when you see it from high above, it's amazing that people are even able to wait this long. some people yesterday, 2 1/2 hours, they said, 3 hours, just to get a tank of gas. in some places, they're rationing it, allowing only 10 gallons per customer. coming up at the top of the hour on "morning joe" we'll turn to the campaign. the final four days now, both candidates leaving no stone unturned in the battleground states. we'll kick around their closing arguments with our "morning joe"

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we told you at the top of the show the death toll from hurricane sandy stands at 94, one of the deadliest category 1 storm of a generation. more lives has been lost to hurricane sandy than any other category 1 hurricane since 1972 when hurricane agnes took 122 lives. the final death toll from hurricane sandy probably won't be known for weeks. as we've been talking about all morning, hurricane sandy has caused a computing nightmare for millions of new yorkers. how bad are things? steven colbert was forced to take public transportation. >> mayor bloomberg's letting only cars with three or more passengers cross the bridges and tunnels into manhattan. of course, normally it's just me and my driver hector. so this morning i had to -- sorry. i'm sorry. i'm sorry. it's hard to get out.

this morning -- instead of going in hector's audi a8l with heated leather seats, i had to take the bus. yes. a public bus with the public in it. i couldn't find the seat warmers. i kept pulling on that string to call the stewardess, but nobody came. they never even pulled out the drink cart. come on, bloomberg! i know this is a once in a lifetime storm, but it's been two days. what's the hold up? how hard is it to drain seawater from 20 miles of subway tunnels? throw a few shamwows down there. we have the technology. please. god, please. don't make me call that bus with those people again. they wear denim.

everywhere. >> oh, the horrors of public transportation. early voting, as you know, has been a critical component of the obama re-election strategy. last night vice president joe biden stopped by "the late show" with david letterman with his top ten reasons to cast a ballot before election day. >> vice president biden, take it away. number ten. >> i'm not saying each early voter gets a free cheeseburger, but i'm not saying they don't either. >> yeah, see. not saying they do. not saying they don't. number six. >> if you vote early, you don't have to pay taxes. i'm sorry. i'm being told that's not accurate. >> that's not accurate. number five. >> single and looking to mingle? find that special someone on early voting line. >> yeah, that's right. number four. >> of course, there's the open bar. >> that's right.

the open bar. number three. >> not exercising your right to vote is malarky. it's literally malarky. >> okay. whatever you say. number two. >> early voters will receive a $5 million donation from donald trump. >> wow. wow. now we're talking. and the number one good thing about voting early, ladies and gentlemen. >> honestly, don't you want this election over with already? >> yes, we do. >> four more days. still ahead on "way too early," why are you awake? your tweets, texts, and e-mails. "morning joe" just minutes away. i love how clean and healthy my mouth is right now. i wish i could keep it this way. [ male announcer ] now you can. with the crest pro-health clinical line. used together, they help keep your teeth 97% as clean as a dental cleaning. the toothpaste actually reduces plaque.

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